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    Issue 11 2008 ISSN 1449 - 0528, 27 June 2008

    Information and activities from edna and its stakeholders

    Presentations, comments and views
    From the edna office
    edna activities
    edna resources
    Trends and opportunities

    While the Networker aims to be informative it does not seek to be comprehensive or authoritative and views expressed here are not necessarily the views of education.au limited or stakeholders.
    Send your contributions to news-editor@edna.edu.au. Contributors are advised to read The Networker guidelines.

    edna - Find! Join! Connect!

    Presentations, comments and views

    Adult language, literacy and numeracy discussion paper released
    A new discussion paper is calling for comment on the future direction of the Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program (LLNP) which helps Australians who have low levels of language, literacy and numeracy skills. The paper identifies a number of questions that will help guide respondents. Written submissions should be submitted by 11 July 2008.

    Internet use by Australian educators
    edna and education.au have released findings of comprehensive market research into the use of technology by Australian educators across all sectors of learning. The majority of educators (79 per cent) said the internet had become an essential part of their work, 36 per cent regarded themselves as proficient and/or confident in their use of ICT .
    The range of barriers cited are:

    • poor infrastructure (41%)
    • content blocking (40%)
    • limited access (21%)
    • limited confidence or expertise (20%)
    • lack of relevant resources on the internet (12%)

    The full report is available from the education.au website

    National training system's e-learning priorities emerge
    Six e-learning priorities have emerged across states and territories as the national training system takes an innovative approach in responding to the challenges of a modern economy and the training needs of Australian businesses and workers. The national training system's e-learning strategy, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework), has awarded funding to support more than 90 registered training organisations (RTOs) to deliver innovative e-learning solutions for the vocational education and training (VET) system. Although funding has been handed out via states and territories according to their local training priorities, some common themes have emerged across Australia. Australian Flexible Learning Framework, 23 June 2008.

    On Track survey shows more students defer higher education
    A growing proportion of students are choosing to defer university studies or take up apprenticeships, according to new research from the Victorian government. The research shows that a lower proportion of Year 12 completers are enrolling in university, with many young people, particularly those from rural areas, deferring studies to work for a year to become eligible for youth allowance and cover living costs.
    The annual On Track survey, conducted by ACER for the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, surveyed more than 33,000 young people who completed the Victorian Certificate of Education, the International Baccalaureate, or the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (Intermediate or Senior).

    The Second Life of science research
    Researchers at the University of Western Australia are using Second Life to create online 3D worlds in which scientists can collaborate with other researchers and with students. Science Network, Western Australia. 25 June 2008.

    RED - Recognition - Enhancement - Development. The contribution of sessional teachers to higher education
    Recently released by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, The RED report provides outcomes from a project on the contribution of sessional teachers to higher education. A website from the project is also available. June 2008.

    WA Education Workforce Initiatives Report
    The Twomey report entitled 'If you think education is expensive' has been released in Western Australia. The Ministerial Taskforce: Education Workforce Initiatives, was developed in response to the progressive decline in the number of teachers available to work in WA. Extensive recommendations cover remuneration, leadership and mentoring, flexible learning, housing, vocational education and training, workload, and career progression. Education Workforce Initiatives WA, 18 June 2008.

    From the edna office

    edna Groups upgrade this weekend.
    edna Groups will be undergoing upgrade from approx 5.30 pm (AEST) on Friday 27 June to 5.00 pm (AEST) Sunday 29 June. This is the biggest upgrade we have ever attempted and applies to all 1500 groups which currently accommodate 20,000 members and numerous guests. At the end of the process we will have changed the database over to unicode, and upgraded to Moodle 1.8.4
    We have undertaken extensive testing in-house and do not expect many problems.
    We will also undertake an automated backup of all groups.

    We expect normal operations to be resumed at approximately 5.00 pm (AEST) Sunday 29 June
    The main difference between Moodle 1.6.4 (what we currently use) and Moodle 1.8.4 lies in refinement of the tools related to permissions and rights. The upgrade to unicode will enable the use of a number of new third party plugins and is essential for the use of further upgrades.
    All participants of edna Groups have been notified of this outage.

    Engage, Connect, Communicate

    Show Me
    The recent release of blogs in me.edu.au provides the opportunity for educators to find and share good ideas and practice in using ICT in education and training. We are promoting use of the tag 'showme' as an identifier of good practical ideas in me.edu.au. Once a blog entry, whiteboard entry or profile entry or community link includes the word showme, it can be found, courtesy of me.edu.au's search.
    As the number of showme tags increases you will be able to search on multiple terms like showme physics, or showme literacy, or digital storytelling showme. Search works on tags and on any word on the site.
    What is a 'practical idea' ? We are looking for:

    • teaching and learning examples: what has worked or not worked, and
    • introductions to new tools, applications techniques: the sort of advice that teachers, instructors and lecturers will call "good practical information".

    Help available for publishers in me.edu.au
    We are keen to promote appealing tools and support people in using media, such as video, Voicethread and PhotoStory 3. Educators who would like help in doing this can contact John Travers who can assist with publishing in multimedia formats. Out of this experience we will put together some models and tutorials for other publishers to have a try themselves. Our goal is to stimulate a widening circle of users to add practical ideas and stories and for these to be discoverable by all. See John's blog at http://me.edu.au/b/jtravers/

    edna blogs

    These blog postings are all found in me.edu.au and have been created by edna team members in the last fortnight.

    OzProjects News

    Languages Matter
    A new global project has become available on the OzProjects website for students from lower primary to upper secondary years. The Languages Matter project includes links to online resources for a number of languages taught in Australian schools. It also aims to facilitate student understanding of the role of languages in global citizenship. As part of the project students can create and share a Wordle in a language other than English. Students can also learn how people speak in different parts of the world using the World Languages Map. Two forums are available for students to introduce themselves and talk about their experiences living in or visiting other countries. Please remember that you must be enrolled and logged in to the project to participate fully. For further information and assistance contact Cecily Wright via email cwright@educationau.edu.au.

    A new Middle Primary reading activity has been added to the online project Planet Earth in Our Hands. Students are encouraged to read two online books available on the Lookybook website and then join discussion forums to talk about the books. The chosen books have an environmental/conservation theme. This activity would be suited to use on an interactive whiteboard.

    Melina Marchetta, author of Looking for Alibrandi and two other books for adolescents, has been our guest on Beware of Books, the OzProjects book club for 15-19 year olds, this week. Melina has generously answered 26 questions from participants, setting a strong precedent for future guest authors.

    edna activities

    edna workshops
    edna's hands-on workshops provide training in the use of online services and collaborative tools. Each one day mini-conference includes guest speakers, hands-on sessions and presentations about technologies transforming education. edna workshops also provide opportunities for networking with the edna team and other education professionals. In 2008, the theme for the edna workshops is edna and me. Seven workshops have already been held with approximately 430 attendees.
    Workshops to come:

    • Hobart, Monday 21 July at The Hutchins School
    • Sydney, Tuesday 29 July - FULL
    • Darwin, Tuesday 5 August at the Palmerston Library

    For more details see the edna workshops page
    See the slide show (Flickr)

    edna's online conferences
    On Wednesday 18 June edna successfully held our first ever online conference with 5 sessions each of about an hour
    Sessions held were

    • social networking with me.edu.au
    • finding resources for embedding in multimedia
    • digital literacies
    • learning without borders
    • education in other worlds (Second Life sessions)

    For the daytime sessions we used Live Classroom currently set up in edna sandpit. 85 people attended.
    On Tuesday 24 June we repeated the conference with exactly the same sessions and 90 people attended.
    The archives of the Live Classroom sessions are now available at:

    These presentations are available through Wimba Live Classroom, and you will find that they require a participant login. Just use your first name and they should let you in. You may need to use the set up wizard if it presents itself. The archive should show the slides, the text comments, and you should be able to listen to the presentation.

    The plans are to run more online sessions in the next few months, and you can ensure that you get notifications about them by joining the workshops email list. http://www.lists.edna.edu.au/lists/lists/subscribe?list=workshops

    E-learning Insights: ednaworkshops08 1 of 4 - me.edu.au: Episode 17
    In this first of four series of episodes from edna's online workshops, Kerrie Smith, Assistant Manager of edna's Professional Learning and Online Communities team introduces participants to the new me.edu.au web service. me.edu.au is an online professional networking service for educators and is a key entry point to edna services which include online communities of practice available via edna Groups, email discussion Lists, and tools available to developers and educators in the toolkit area of the edna website. The Episode 17 page provides a list of resources to access including an mp3 file.

    OUT AND ABOUT

    • Sarah Hayman, assistant manager of edna in Information Management, recently visited Murdoch University and gave an informal presentation to a group from their Teaching and Learning Centre about edna higher education services and new developments including me.edu.au.
    • Kerrie Smith, assistant manager of edna in Professional Learning and Online Communities, gave a presentation at ACER in Melbourne about edna services and tools, and possible future directions.

    Conference presentations to come:

    • Cecily Wright, Global Education and OzProjects Manager, is presenting at the 9th Environmental Education Conference in Darwin
      Her topic Virtual Dirt: Online student projects for 2008 the Year of Sanitation and Planet Earth
    • Lynley Clark, Schools Information Officer, is off to Perth to the Beginning and Returning Teachers Seminar at the Burswood Convention Centre, where she will be delivering a plenary session on integrating ICT into the curriculum using edna.
    • Kerrie Smith, John Travers, Janette Carter, Kerry Johnson, Cecily Wright, Alison Hall and Janette Carter are presenting at the CEGSA conference in Adelaide in mid July.

    Upcoming national consultation about the future of edna and me.edu.au: edna2010
    All Australian governments, states and territories and sectors of education and training have a significant long term investment in Education Network Australia (edna). edna is now entering its 11th year as a successful national collaborative network to advance the use of information and communication technologies, particularly the Internet to improve learning and teaching in Australia.
    In July and August representatives of the agency that manages edna, education.au will be visiting states and territories to seek feedback on edna future directions and identify opportunities for mutual benefit between education providers and edna.
    The manager of edna, Mark Tranthim-Fryer, is inviting interested persons to comment on edna's future directions via his blog at http://me.edu.au/b/marktf/
    Questions and issues and suggestions can also be posted to education.au via consultation@edna.edu.au

    FAREWELLS

    The edna team bids farewell this week to staff who have made huge contribution to our services.
    Long term technical specialists, Vaughan Hobbs and Simon Kahl who have developed and supported key features of edna including Lists, search, shared information services and the resources repository, are moving to new challenges and we thank them and wish them well.
    Kerrie Smith has been a key face of edna for the past 7 years as Schools Information Officer, and recently Assistant Manager. Kerrie's contribution to Australian education will continue in a new role as Executive Officer at education.au, but she will be sorely missed at edna.

    edna resources

    New resources in the edna repository
    http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/resources/
    You can include the web address http://api.edna.edu.au/recent.rss?category=0 in an RSS reader to be notified of new additions in real time.

    Featured resources recently added to the edna repository:

    EnhanceTV Interactive Catalogue
    EnhanceTV has produced an interactive catalogue designed to be installed on your PC or Macintosh computer. The catalogue allows you to quickly search and browse all the available resources without the need for an internet connection. Updates to the catalogue will be made available from their website each month.

    Tales of the Todd
    Tales of the Todd is an educational resource provided by CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Centre for Arid Zone Research, Alice Springs. The set of activities found on this website is aimed at high school students and gives a daily curriculum over a 2 week period. It provides an introduction to freshwater supplies around the world, and a basic understanding of the function of freshwater systems in central Australia.

    Wordle
    Wordle is a tool for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

    Your guide to social e-learning
    The Australian Flexible Learning Framework has released a new resource about social e-learning for teachers, trainers, educators and facilitators working in vocational and educational training within adult training organisations, universities and schools. There are guides, case studies, strategies, tools and activities which explore opportunities and challenges that are offered by social e-learning in practice. Australian Flexible Learning Framework.

    Trends and opportunities

    educationau seminar: Mind Over Matter - How Technology Matters
    Professor Martin Westwell, Director of the Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century will be keynote presenter at our next seminar in Sydney, 26 August 2008. Professor Westwell will provide insights into how modern lifestyles and technologies are influencing the minds of the young and old.
    This education.au seminar offers a unique opportunity to explore how technology is impacting on attention, motivation, multitasking, learning and work. The morning and afternoon sessions will explore recent research and how to capitalise on the opportunities offered by technology.
    There will be two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. You are encouraged to attend both. The afternoon session will focus on what this means for the workplace.
    Further information and registration details are available from the seminar page.
    Please assist by forwarding this information to your networks.

    Call for papers - EDUCAUSE Australasia 2009
    This is the premier event for professionals working in higher education who manage technologies to advance scholarship, learning and teaching. With the theme Innovate, Collaborate & Sustain, this conference will explore the challenges in areas such as how to innovate in the knowledge economy, collaboration with virtual teams and the ever present green agenda and action. Abstract submissions for refereed papers due: Monday 28 July 2008.

    ACEC '08 early bird discounted registration extended
    The early bird discounted registration for the biennial Australian Computers in Education Conference has been extended until 25 July 2008.

    UNESCO launches Internet discussion on Open Educational Resources Toolkit
    The UNESCO Community on Open Educational Resources (OER) is launching an Internet discussion in order to provide input to the finalisation of an OER Toolkit, which has been created to support the development and use of Open Educational Resources. The session will take place from 16 to 27 June 2008 and will be open to everybody. More information available here , 11 June 2008.

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